Virtue Signaling
Tantamount to Sacrilege
This Good Friday blog had its genesis in my pastor’s remark in a Lenten sermon, but it sprung to life while on a walk somedays later. The first sermonic thought I had had in 15 months. No exaggeration. Before retirement, I had thought my mind would be pungent, abundant, extravagant with sermon ideas from the lack of preparing them. But nothing, nada, zip, zero in over a year. Then like the exploding in heaven purple tree in Robin William’s 1998 film “What Dreams May Come”, BOOM! There it was. Continue reading
Resisting Artificial Intelligence
The above is the title of Harper’s July 2024 issue. I sure don’t hear many raising this hue and cry. According to Benjamín Labatut’s essay “The God’s of Logic – Before and after artificial intelligence”, we ought to be listening to Geoffrey Hinton. Labatut says Hinton is widely considered the godfather of AI who “has mutated from an evangelist of a new form of reason into a prophet of doom.” He himself credits the change to “the realization that we had in fact, not replicated our intelligence, but created a superior one” (28). Continue reading
Just as I Suspicioned
I heard my mother-in-law say now and again that she ‘suspicioned’ this or that. I always thought that was a made up word. My Merriam-Webster says it is a word though they consider it “chiefly dialectal”. I always liked the word because you knew what it meant and it was apropos to many things. Continue reading
If not for the Laughing I’d be crying
Give us 18 Minutes, we’ll give you the world
The Satellite News Network (SNC) debuted in 1982 with this slogan. It would be more accurate to say that if you give them 18 minutes they will give you their world, the world as they see it, believe it, edit it. The internet does that instantaneously and overwhelmingly. Continue reading
Is Implying Closed Communion Practicing It?
Again, I don’t go browsing, surfing, or shopping the web for Communion Statements. Something else brought me to St. Paul Lutheran Church & Early Childhood Ministry, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Columbus, IN. Once there I checkd out their Sunday bulletin, and you won’t believe what I found… Continue reading
Who’s Writing the History Now?
You know the adage that history is written by the winners. Well, it’s re-written by the losers. Solzhenitsyn points out in one of his books on the Gulag that the Soviets removed from their history ¾ of what really happened. Like the embarrassing mutinies. Those uprising became myths within 15 or even 10 years. “No wonder some say that there was no Christ, no Buddha, no Mohammed. Then you’re dealing in thousands of years” (Gulag 3, 228). But today I think the history is being re-written by what historically is the lowest rung on the intellectual ladder – fiction writers. Continue reading
Woman the Glory of Man?
You know 1 Cor. 11:7, “For a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man”, doesn’t mean that women exists to glorify us. No it means they are the crème dela crème of mankind. Adam was the Beta model of humanity; then Eve was made. Women become the archenemy of the Enemy. He zeroes in on her. And fallen men help. Continue reading
Don’t Let the Old Man In
One of my sister’s sent me the link to the song named above on my birthday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc5AWImplfE.[i] Give it a listen. You need to be a certain age to really appreciate it. My older brother said: He sneaks in. My older brother-in-law says the old man sleeps in his bed. Continue reading